Careful nurturing of the game at schools and underage has ensured a bright future for Waterford hurling, writes Tom Humphries
THERE WERE fewer than 3,000 people in Walsh Park on the day last August when a little-noted famine came to an end. The significance wasn't wasted on anyone present though. The sun beat down and a young Waterford team ended a pattern of 26 years by winning the Tony Forristal Under-14 tournament, the premier competition for the age group and one Waterford have been hosting for a shade over a quarter of a century since its inception.
Good young teams come and go and sometimes their arrival is as random as the alignment of the planets, but Waterford had been knocking on the door for quite some time, losing four finals since the turn of the century. This was the consummation of a marriage of belief and good coaching.
So on that grand Sunday morning last August the hunger ended. On the way to the triumph the Waterford boys beat Kilkenny by 14 points, holding the stripey lads scoreless from play. In the final against Tipperary they had eight points to spare. As an end to the bad times it was as emphatic as a punctuation mark.
And in a strange way not surprising either. When Waterford play Clare tomorrow in Limerick we are confronted with two counties at either end of the spectrum when it comes to harvesting the long-term benefits of success. It is 13 years since Clare's wonderful breakthrough and a matter of record by now that the follow-on work at underage just hasn't happened.
Clare, according to the stats, last reached the Munster final in 1999. Their prolonged absence from the big dance is made all the more worrying by the glory years which immediately preceded it. You have to go back to the 1940s to find a time when Clare got this deep into a decade without reaching a Munster final.
In Waterford it is 10 years since the breakthrough at Munster level, 10 years which haven't brought an All-Ireland appearance but have yielded a flow of Munster titles, a National League and constant expectation.
And if doing things correctly brings its reward, the good times will last. Waterford have undeniably got things right at the grassroots. Whenever Justin McCarthy and Tony Brown and Paul Flynn shuffle off into the sunset there will be a generation at least waiting to fill their shoes.
It might be 1992 and that amazing Paul Flynn team since Waterford had success at minor or under-21 but the structures have got sounder and sounder and the game has never been healthier in clubs and schools.
Take Jake Dillon. Jake was the free-taker and the star of the show that day in Walsh Park. For a young Waterford hurler crowding the mid-teens a Tony Forristal winner's medal would be sufficient fare for dining out on until retirement. In the months that followed, Dillon went on to take winner's medals in the Dean Ryan, the Harty and the Dr Crokes Cups. That is a Munster juvenile colleges title, a Munster senior colleges title and an All-Ireland senior colleges title. He is 15 and surfing the wave of Waterford's excellence.
When De La Salle Waterford retained the Dr Croke Cup this year, beating for the second time in the championship an excellent Thurles CBS team which was propelled by seven of last year's All-Ireland-winning Tipperary minors, they reached the high point for Waterford hurling in a season which brought the county six of the nine provincial colleges titles available in Munster. The B and C grade senior titles went to Lismore and Dungarvan; the county also won the A and C grade titles at under-16½ and a provincial title at under-15½ also. De La Salle were dominant but there was quiet satisfaction in the county at the spread of hurling excellence and the fact that at under-14 the Friary, of Abbeyside, Dungarvan, won the county title.
Waterford have high hopes this year for the county minors but how the boys do isn't critical to the future of the county.
"Probably at county level we always will struggle a bit because our base is so small," says Ann Hogan, the promotions officer for the game at second level in Waterford. "We haven't won a first round of the minor championship in a long time but it doesn't necessarily follow if you have good minor teams that you will have good senior teams. Tipp showed that in the early 90s with a series of good teams but didn't make the breakthrough.
"Waterford will, in my opinion anyway, never go on a winning streak at county minor but it is possible to get three or four good lads off each year and to occasionally break through."
At schools level the difference is small. An extra six months' latitude in the age limit and, with De La Salle anyway, a tradition of teams being supplemented by a handful of players from across the border in Kilkenny. This year's winning side had a back from Mooncoin and a forward from Piltown fleshing out a team sheet filled with lads from Ballygunner and from the De La Salle club.
"The minors are a conundrum," says Pat Moore, whose decade as county coaching officer ended recently. "The colleges, especially De la Salle, would have that little Kilkenny influence and always a couple of lads just gone past the age for minors. We had solid, sound Waterford minors on those schools teams though. I think we will be respectable at minor.
"We haven't won a Munster in 16 years but it depends on the outlook. If we can continue getting players through from minor panels we're doing well. The John Mullanes, et cetera, came off minor teams that weren't that successful in Munster."
Indeed Waterford's success is a story of efficient management of limited resources. The county draws from 35 clubs, Moore reckons, while Cork would have the pick of 250.
"You can only put 15 on the field though, and perhaps we realised that it is easier to get quality coaching to a smaller number of clubs than it is to be consistent with a huge number. We have three games promotions officers around the county but the bulk of the work has been done at voluntary level with coach recruitment and training and just getting the basics right."
Derek McGrath was co-manager of De La Salle teams which have put together back-to-back All-Irelands. Before playing Fitzgibbon in Cork he played on the 1992 minor side with Paul Flynn that reached an All-Ireland and was beaten playing for the school in a Harty Cup final in 1993 by St Flannan's of Ennis. Flannan's duly reached their fifth Harty final in a row, having one three-in-a-row to start the run.
Clare's glories were founded on good schools work and a run of Féile na nGael wins in the 1980s which upped the standard. The irony is that the balance of power has shifted in the wake of Clare's breakthrough.
McGrath sees the lengths the traditional counties have been going to. Waterford are prepared to go that distance.
"I go along with the theory that the game is better these days than ever. Every coach is looking for an edge as regards preparation. It's hard to come up with a new fad always. We went to Sunderland with the boys this year, stayed in Newcastle. Went out and had the crack. I see rugby schools going for warm-weather work in France in August and September before they go back to school. That is the road we'll go soon, I would say."
"Last year we were up in City West for a weekend two weeks before the Harty final. You have to create the environment. It cost €60,000 last year for the school senior team, which is fair money. We have gone from a time when we would have five or six sliotars at training to having 50 or 60 on the go, from training in the field to training at night out at club venues."
The Croke Cup final required a replay to separate De La Salle from Thurles CBS. There was a week between the dates. De La Salle had seven or eight players carrying knocks and strains and took the decision to send them for cryotherapy in Wexford.
They got there and Thurles had the same number in attendance.
"That's at €140 a pop for young lads at 17 years of age. And Thurles were doing the same. It's some investment."
He feels it will be worth it. De La Salle should provide seven starters and 10 panellists to this year's county minor side and they will keep filtering the players up.
Of the seniors who play Clare tomorrow he notes that Stephen Molumphy and Aidan Kearney were Dr Harty Cup winners six years ago with St Colman's Fermoy. The insistence on excellence at an early age is always useful.
The Waterford revival is a pleasant chicken-or-egg conundrum. The schools and clubs who have benefited from the county board's strong coach-education policy over the last 10 years have been pushing players up through the ranks. Meanwhile ongoing success and the county's defiant hovering at the top table has filled imaginations.
"In traditional football clubs hurling has taken over," says Ann Hogan. "Our footballers are really struggling in traditional football areas, especially in the west. I would have more of an affinity with football but I see it all the time. In the east, even in Tramore town, which would always have been a football area, now at school level they are much stronger at hurling.
"In Ardmore - Séamus and Declan Prendergast's club - they were always renowned for football but hurling has taken over. Young fellas want to be Tony Brown and Dan Shanahan. If I have to bring a footballer to present a cup somewhere in the county, who do I bring? Who has any profile?"
Gary Hurney might be the answer. The football captain makes his debut for the hurlers tomorrow.
Meanwhile Waterford City, the county's main population centre, has one senior football team.
Tomorrow in Limerick the senior hurlers set out on yet another quixotic tilt at glory. Yet again the challenge is characterised as taking place in the wee small hours in The Last Chance saloon.
In Waterford they don't see it that way. The game has grown, the seeds have been sown. The present is hopeful and the future is bright.
